Slashdot Mirror
Old Geek Invents New Stick
the morgawr writes "According to the EE Times and Science Blog, a scientist at University of Rhode Island has developed a new type of antenna design that, by increasing the efficiency, performs as well as the convential quarter-wave design but is only 1/3 as large."
this is patents at their best: the little guy innovates, and becomes the not-so-little guy in reward
that should be the purpose of patents, to protect the little guy who innovates
let us hope that we can back to this world, a world where patents reward innovation, instead of suppress it
it is a delicate balance, but there are hordes of ip lawyers and corporate whores out there who are hard at work, having sold their conscience, hard at work warping the balance in the direction of those who don't deserve to be rewarded for suppressing true innovation like this
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
effect in the radio industry, where finding areas to put antennas is difficult due to population density, FAA regulations, etc. A more compact unit could be placed on taller buildings, essentially broadening the area that the signal could reach in urban areas.
Don't be a looter...and yes, I know that it's spelled with an "A" instead of an "E".
That the University of Rhode Island and the Physics dept were made beneficiaries of the patent.
I can see this generating alot of revenue, and people (corporations) that may try to rip this off.
At least they will have a vested interest in fighting for the patent.
IBM, Cisco, Microsoft or any other tech company can steal this patent by filing something akin to the following.
o ugh and/or showed it to you first, if you jack it up to a computer, then you've got a patent pal! Now no one can connect a computer to this device without giving you money! Yippie!!
"A Method for reducing the size of radio antennae by a quarter using new design UNDER THE CONTROL OF A SOFTWARE DRIVEN DEVICE."
Remember, even if someone else has patented,invented,used,implemented,sold,issued,th
Welcome to the US patent Office. Where dreams CAN come true!
May the Maths Be with you!
Smaller is nice, but if we build a cell phone with a DLM the same size as the antennas in current models, can we get 3 times the reception?
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
From the simplistic description given, this design has hundreds of thousands or prior art examples already sold in the marketplace, and has had for maybe 45 years.
Most any CB'er that wasn't running a full 1/4 wave stick on the roof of his car, and getting it mangled by driving thru any overpass with less than 14 feet of clearance, was using a shortened antenna of this design. They were also a bit narrowband, having extreme difficulties in getting 1.3/1 or better vswr performance over the 40 channels of the cb band.
They alsa radiate a disproportionate amount of their power well above the horizon, reducing the gain in the real world.
New? Yeah, somewhat like me, I'll be 70 in a few months.
I suspect that there are, or were (some having gone on to that big retirement party in the sky held for failed companies or merged into oblivion entities) plenty of patents that will prove prior art, if the patent office wasn't too understaffed and lazy to search for them. Avanti & HiGain are just 2 names that come to mind.
Scuse me while I chuckle at yet another of the patent offices incompetant blunders.
Cheers, Gene
that is because it goes agains all antenna and RF theory.
Granted, I have seen antennas that defy logic until you really understand how they are working.... the Discone antenna for example... but this one still is baffling and the lack of details increases the skeptical thoughts... no explination at ALL on how it works, no theory explained other than "i did this... no you cant look at it!" responses...
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The aricle specifically states that it has high bandwidth.
It is nice to see people questioning basic assumptions. When I was in university, we were told that there was a hard limit on the amount of data that could be transferred over a standard phone line -- that was 1200 baud, hence 1200 bits/second.
Antenna design has had basic assumptions about it for years. It is only when you start to question those assumptions that you move forward.
de VE9MKS
Keep in mind that lots of radio is line of sight so, higher means better sight in hilly areas, not forgetting that tall buildings can also cause problems. Thusly, I can't imagine tall towers going anywhere anytime soon.
I'm betting this antenna has a very narrow bandwidth
My thoughts exactly. The trade-off you mention was proven from Maxwell's equations in 1947, when everyone's interest was in making small vehicle-mount antennas in the HF bands. (The proof, though, makes some assumptions about ground planes & such.) I can't remember the reference, but I think it was published in the Proceedings of the IRE.
Applying techniques like these (fractal antennas, frequency selective surfaces, artificial magnetic conductors, blah, blah, blah) to practical cellphone handsets has never proven sucessful, despite many venture-funded startups that tried (& went bust with the tech-wreck). Too many practical considerations get in the way (dual resonance for both 900 & 1800 MHz, no control over size & shape of the ground plane, dielectric loading from a human hand & head or other nearby components, must be quality controlled for large production volumes, etc.)
The biggest impediment to smaller cellphone antennas is 900 MHz support.
Great hopefully this tech can make it's way to wireless networking and cell tech...